AMD followed into Intel’s footsteps and launched their six-core processors as well. However, they used a completely different approach: AMD decided not to switch to new manufacturing process or develop a completely new semiconductor die. However, as a result we got a Phenom II X6 – a mainstream and affordable processor with six computational cores that has no analogues and is compatible with Socket AM3 form-factor.

Synthetic Benchmarks

We included the calculation of 32 million digits of the π number for one reason: it uses only one computational thread. Therefore, it becomes an excellent test for processors working in Turbo mode, which is now supported not only by Intel processors but also by CPUs from AMD. And as we see from the diagrams, Turbo CORE technology implemented in Phenom II X6 turns out pretty efficient. The top six-core AMD processor is significantly faster than the top Phenom II X4 model, catching up with Core i7-860 working at 3.46 GHz when the load is single-threaded.

The processor test from, the 3DMark Vantage suite splits the load into parallel threads according to the number of available processor cores. Unfortunately, Phenom II X6 processors don’t do that well here. The best they can do is to outperform the quad-core Core i5-750. As for Core i7 processors that have not only four physical cores but also four virtual ones due to Hyper-Threading technology, they prove to be much faster.